


Oh, The Mighty

by willzamo



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Hurt Peter Parker, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parent Steve Rogers, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 01:54:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18400778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willzamo/pseuds/willzamo
Summary: it starts like this.' i'll always be your guy in the chair. '(     shut up.  shut up.  shut.  up.     take it back,  please,   take it back.     )he will never be able to take it back.         those words will never be unsaid.' please make it stop. 'it will never stop.





	1. prologue.   ( if it meant the pieces would stay together )

**Author's Note:**

> my name is will and i am addicted to pain.
> 
> expect a very, very brief mention of skip westcott.

_**it happens like this.** _

     start, _stop_. **fast - forward** , _**rewind**_ , **stop**.  it always plays the same.

                        ' no ! '  feet lurch his body forward but he's not quick enough,  never quick enough.  it takes thirty seconds before his entire world rips in half.

 

he wakes up screaming but the name tastes like acid on his lips.  he has no right to taste it's grace,  to feel the syllable at the tip of his tongue,  and it makes him gag on broken promises.  the light flickers on and a voice echoes above asking questions that his lungs won't allow him to answer.     ' mr.  parker,  you seem to be in distress.  shall i notify boss ? '      _please don't.  please don't let him see this.  please keep him away._   blunt fingertips claw into the flesh between a spider's ribs,  desperate to hold the pieces together,  unwilling to break within these walls.  the question repeats and he wretches into the trash can beside his bed.

                                                                             his senses are going haywire.  the room is too hot,  too small,  and the walls grow closer with his grief.      _your fault.  your fault.  your fault._      he cannot will his heart to beat slower and eventually the artificial intelligence does not give him a choice.  the door clicks open and there are arms around him that make it easier to not fall apart. 

     ' hey underoos,  take a breath, '  they are kindred spirits.  they break in opposite directions but their shards will always manage to fall together.  fate brings them there not of their own volition,  heroes by circumstance,  self - sacrificial lambs.  tony stark has forced spider - man into a sabbatical and that meant keeping him away from queens.  away from where it happened.  away from losing himself even further to grief and an incessant need to avenge.  the soul in stark's arms is not spider - man but a sixteen year old kid cut from a cloth not dissimilar to the one they've all been cut from.  he wants nothing more than to take the pain away but he can't so instead,  he lets peter cry and he rocks him like he wishes his father would have when he was young,  and he makes a promise to himself that the sweet boy's heart will never shatter again the way it has this time.

                                                                                                                           ' he didn't deserve this.  i shouldn't have let him get so close. ' 

                                                                                                                                           oh how this child has stolen the words right from tony's thoughts.

 


	2. one.  ( if it meant we were better. )

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it happens like this.
> 
> years pass and they become each other's hero. the dust settles and they'll always be there to pick the other back up when they fall just a little too hard. ( oh, the irony. )
> 
> ' peter parker is the spider - man. you bring me his little s i d e k i c k and he'll surely come a - runnin'. '

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter, there will be a very brief mention of skip westcott and what he did to peter. this is going to be longer than i expected oops.

_**it happens like this.** _

the process is long and arduous.  upon first inspection,  the house is not cleared for a child,  so they move.  he will not let his brother's child become just another face in the system or even worse  -  an experiment in that awful man's lab.  norman osborn petitions for custody and loses  (  he knows people,  sure,  but none of them are too keen on him.  ben parker,  on the other hand,  was a good man with a lot of friends in the right places  --  places that could not be bought.  )  so they move house,  and it's bigger and slightly more than they can comfortably afford,  but it's so worth it because it passes and their boy comes to stay.  peter is small and silent,  a pretty boy with chocolate curls and bambi brown eyes,  and he looks up at them through long and thick lashes like they're the first shred of sunlight after a monstrous storm. 

                                       may thinks ;      _why did i ever fight him on this ?_      and remembers with a slight twinge of shame how vehemently she'd told ben   ** _i don't want children._** she is not cruel,  she never denied that peter could come,  but she let ben know that this isn't what her life was meant to be.  but how wrong she'd been,  because her eyes meet that little boy's and she decides that she'll fight both what's above and what's below if it meant that her sweet boy never felt his heart break,  never in the way it has now.  she's met him before,  a handful of times before this,  but this light is different.  he's hers,  she decides,  he's the slice that her heart has been missing. 

peter does not speak for a month after moving in with his aunt and uncle.  he clings to ben with such desperation that it almost keeps the man from leaving for work and he can't help but feel like peter knows that something bad is heading his way.  when ben does leave,  peter cries soundlessly into may's lap before retreating to his room to build one of the many lego sets that may impulsively buys him whenever they have the extra money.  but one night,  just one week before it's time to send him to his new school here in queens,  the little boy crawls into their bed and lays between them.  his lovely eyes are stuck to the ceiling and may coos something like   _are you alright,  baby?  did you have a nightmare?_   and he shakes his head.  struggles for a moment with trembling lips and finally he begins to speak.     ' nuh - n -  no, '  it's as soft as a whisper.  ' i muh - miss mah - mah - mah - '  tears slip down his round cheeks and he throws himself into her chest and heaves sobs until his asthma is triggered and they spend their night not sleeping but snuggling on the couch until ben leaves for work. 

he's terrified of going to his new school.  they get him new glasses and new clothes and a little iron man key chain for his brand new backpack but his anxiety is daunting.  that is,  until it isn't.  she hears peter gasp from the backseat of ben's police cruiser and turns around.  he's staring wide eyed through the window,  beaming,  ' muh - may !  that  buh - buh - boy ! '  he's pointing excitedly at another child  --  a round little boy with a bald head and beautiful skin,  who is carrying the object of her nephew's excitement in the form of a star wars backpack.  he jumps out of the car with a hasty wave and a kiss to aunt may's cheek and runs to his new friend's side. 

it didn't matter,  may realizes,  because peter adapts.  she's so,  so proud,  and swells even further when peter's eagerness is well received.  tears come fast and heavy and  _ **happy**_   because this is just a tell of things to come.  when he comes home from school,  he babbles about his new friend,  and may cries all over.

                she learns that his name is edward leeds,  but peter calls him ned.  ned becomes a permanent fixture in peter's life and may decides that she'll throw herself in front of any monster that comes their way.

and then one day,  ned sneaks quietly out of peter's room and stands in front of aunt may and uncle ben and tells them everything.  the babysitter,  that rotted husk of  _ **demon shit**_ ,  they'd trusted him.  ben's neck is bright red and the veins are popping and he leaves the room and then the house and does not come back for several hours.  ned tells may,  sniffling,  that he'll never let anyone hurt peter like that ever again.  skip westcott does not come around again and nobody asks where he went,  and peter stops talking again.  

                                           it doesn't matter,  ned realizes,  if peter never speaks to him again.  all that matters is that he keeps his promise,  and that man will never hurt him again.

on peter's ninth birthday,  ned leaves a neatly wrapped present in his cubby,  an iron man glove that cost three months of allowance.  peter hugs him but says nothing,  speech therapy be damned,  he says nothing to anyone.  that night,  while watching the news with his  _inay,_ he watches in horror as a little boy in a familiar blue hoodie faces off against one of the robots.  the little boy is wearing an iron man mask and the gifted glove,  and iron man lands beside him and stands in a similar pose,  and he saves peter parker from being blasted away.

peter does not take the helmet off for some time.  it protects him from the bad things and then ned tries to protect him from the bad things too,  and their friendship survives,  and time passes.

 

they become tactile friends.  they find comfort in hand holding and friday night movies,  and it feels right,  so right and beautiful that it doesn't hurt so bad when bullies sling horrible words their way.  

when ben dies,  ned holds the pieces together.  his large arms feel right wrapped around his best friend's shaking form and he whispers promises into his curls while he sleeps that   _i'll carry you when it's too hard to move forward_ and it's like fate knows that some time later that someone else will make that promise to peter and mean it the way he does because peter gives everything for everyone and the universe keeps taking.   **parker luck** , may calls it wryly,    _ **it'll be the death of us all.**_

                                                                            they whisper   _i love you_   just quiet enough to remain undetected by their curfews and it never becomes official until ned sees the new truth.

he doesn't tell peter,  but as cool as it is,  he's terrified.  he's seen enough movies to know what happens to guys like peter parker and the world has tried so hard to break him thus far that it makes the inevitable all the more likely.  peter parker is spider - man,  his best friend is spider - man,  and an   _ **avenger**_ at that.  ned is not prepared for what comes next and most assuredly neither is peter,  and when his best friend shows up at his door covered in blood and soot,  he can't help but pull him close and kiss his tear stained face and make promises so far out of his depth anymore but ned has never been one to abandon a promise.     '  _ **i'll  always  be  your  guy  in  the  chair.**_ '     he sticks around for the late nights where peter calls him gasping with the ghost of asthma and he listens when peter tells him what it's like to be trapped under a building.      _stopping a bus with my bare hands was easy,  but ned,  i'm afraid of small spaces now.  i dream about drowning and this time,   mr.  stark  doesn't come to save me._

                                                                                                                          ' i'll save you, '  ned says earnestly,  and peter laughs.  if ned hears peter whisper   _you already have,_ he doesn't say anything.  ' don't laugh,  dude,  that's what the guy in the chair does. '  and they spend the next hour arguing about how the guy in the chair is the guy in the chair because  _he's the guy in the chair not the guy in the hudson_   and  **peter if you say the word chair one more time  ---**   an empty threat which dissolves in a fit of sleepy giggles and even further into a lullaby of soft snores.

 

sometimes,  the secret is too hard to keep,  so ned adapts.   _peter knows spider - man !_ he boasts,   _he knows all the avengers._   and sometimes people pay attention.  

                                     watching eyes track patterns.  a boy with curly brown hair gets picked up from school three days a week by a stark car that takes him to an internship.  a man on the inside tells the hidden danger,   _he doesn't go where the other interns go_   and that means what they hear is accurate.  it's not hard to figure out the rest,  and it's even less difficult to figure out where to deliver the blow.  he is a predator,  and his prey has such an obvious weakness,  it's almost comical.  they're locked in an embrace in a corner near the school and it's a light he is almost too eager to snuff out.  ' we don't take the spider - man,  the kid's too slippery,  no.  peter parker is the spider - man.  you bring me his little   s i d e k i c k   and he'll surely come a - runnin'.   _without the avengers_ ,  if he knows what's good for him.  '

' mr. kingpin sir,  i don't think  --- '  bye - bye,  mr.   _guy on the inside._   fisk's fist collides with his skull without so much as a second look and blood comes out the other side,  splattering the window.

                                                                                                                                                  _**' get it done tonight.  i want the little bastard dead by morning. '**_


End file.
